Imagine you have a huge debt. I’m talking six figures. Whatever it is– medical, educational, a mortgage– it is crushing and the interest rate on it means that you will be paying it off for the rest of your life. The payments on that debt are so high that you will have to work and work and work around the clock to try and make it. Forget about vacations, luxury items, and eating meals out. You’re just lucky to have food on your table. Everything you think about, do, and work towards seems to have that debt looming over it, shadowing everything. No hope, no relief, no peace.

Have you ever had someone who seemed intent on hurting you or your family? I’m talking about and over and over type situation; like one where they hurt you, you work to forgive them, turn the other cheek, and they end up offending you on a completely new level. The Christianese answer is that you should continue to turn the other cheek to this person, but if you’re anything like me in this kind of situation, your prayers start to sound somewhere along the lines of, “Lord, there just isn’t another cheek left to give!”

I always find it silly when I’m talking about Jesus to someone and they say something along the lines of, “I can’t be a Christian. God doesn’t want me. I’m too far gone for all that.” In theory, I can understand what they mean, and I can sympathize with the fact that someone thinks they are outside of God’s love for them or that they’ve done something to disqualify them from being a part of what God is doing. We might all feel like that at some time or another– caught up in our flesh and sin, knowing we have done wrong– and felt that there was no way Jesus could save us after knowing how despicable we are. To feel that way is to not understand what Jesus did on the cross, and the full extent of that salvation extended.

Well, friends, we’ve been in this place for five weeks now, and I think I’ve just about covered all the amazing little reminders this funny passage of scripture has revealed to me as of late. But I don’t think I could move on and call this series closed without covering the last two verses in this section of Mark 11,which is one last little point Jesus teaches us about prayer.

No matter how long you’ve been a Christian– whether you’re on day one or decades from the starting line– everyone that has ever followed Jesus is unified by at least this fact: none of us have ever graduated from the point of salvation. Because no matter how long your spiritual resume is, it is unavoidable that you will struggle with your own tendency towards sin until the day you die. Maybe that’s blunt or depressing, but it’s true. There will never be a point in this life where you will be able to think, “Well, that’s it. I’ve done it. I’ve obtained a wholly righteous and upright lifestyle. I will no longer struggle with sin.”

Hey Pops, Search me. And I mean really search me. Invade every cell and capillary, every thought-space and corner of my heart. If You should find unforgiveness in me, then bring it to my attention. Help me to war with it. Help me to lay it down.